in his pocket, and his rings on his fingers. But his neck was bare and showed a deep purple crease, as if he had been strangled; his breast was much bruised and his neck broken. Bishop Burnet says, All this I saw, for Dr. Lloyd and I went to view his body, and there were many drops of white wax on his clothes, which he never used himself; and since only persons of quality or priests use these lights, this made all people believe in whose hands he had been. After an inquest which sat for two days, the jury found that Sir E. Godfrey had been barbarously murdered by some person or persons unknown. The body having been first viewed by thousands of persons, a public funeral took place, attended by an immense procession, headed by more than seventy Protestant clergy in full canonicals. At the time it was generally held that Godfrey was murdered by the papists; the papists however maintained that he killed himself in consequence of over excitement, working upon a temperament with an hereditary disposition to insanity. The real cause of his death is still a mystery. The popery panic spread wildly everywhere, and affected all sections of the Protestant church and men of all shades of political opinion.

4. Parliament passes the Papists' Disabling Bill, 1678. It was under the excitement caused by the murder of Godfrey that the parliament met. Charles only slightly alluded to it, but both Shaftsbury and Danby had ends to serve by making capital of it, and Oates and Tonge were made to astonish the House with their narratives. The parliament professed to be alarmed, guards were placed in the cellars under the Houses, and a proclamation extorted from the king that all Catholics not being householders, about thirty thousand, should quit London. In the City, posts and chains were provided for securing the streets, and a force of fifty thousand men put under arms; patrols paraded the streets, batteries were planted, and the great gates kept constantly closed. The catholic lords, Stafford, Powis, Petre, Arundel, and Bellasis were committed to the Tower, and the ordinary prisons filled with papists. The parliament declared "that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for rooting out and destroying the Protestant religion". Titus was proclaimed the Saviour of the Nation, and pensioned subsequently with £1200 a year.

During this fervour, Shaftesbury in the Lords, and Russell in the Commons, moved an address to exclude the Duke of York from the presence and councils of the sovereign. The Duke, persuaded by his brother, retired from the council and the motion was withdrawn; it was however hoped to exclude him from the court

by a bill then pending in the House. The Disabling Bill, as it was called, was for "the more effectual preserving the king's person and government by disabling papists from sitting in either House of Parliament". Though the bill passed, yet so far as the Duke of York was concerned, Shaftesbury failed in his purpose, for the Duke was excepted from the operation of this act by a special provision.

By the Disabling Bill, no person could sit or vote in either House, er name a proxy in the House of Lords, unless he had previously taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed a declaration that the worship of the Church of Rome is idolatrous, under penalty of £500, besides incurring a disability to sue in any court of law, receive a legacy, or be a guardian, executor, or administrator; and that every unqualified peer or commoner, coming into the House or the presence of the king, shall be liable to the same penalty, unless in the next term he should have taken the same declaration in the Court of Chancery. This act continned in force till the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill in 1829.

5. Bedloe's Plot, 1678. Charles had issued a proclamation offering £500 and a full pardon, even to an accomplice, for the discovery of the assassins of Sir E. Godfrey. This brought up a rival to Oates, William Bedloe, originally a stable-boy to Lord Bellasis, but since a swindler and convicted thief, and but just now discharged from Newgate. When examined, he pretended to no acquaintance with Oates, or knowledge of the great plot. He deposed that Godfrey had been smothered between two pillows, by two Jesuits and a servant of Lord Bellasis; that he had been offered two thousand guineas to aid in removing the corpse; and that some nights after, the body was removed from Somerset House by three of the queen's retainers. He afterwards improved his deposition by stating that Godfrey was not stifled but strangled, and as his memory strengthened, it came to his mind that ten thousand men were to land at Bridlington, and thirty thousand from Corunna, at Milford Haven. Further, the king was to be murdered, together with several of the nobility, and the military destroyed by an organised force in London; and that all who refused to become papists were to be "utterly extinguished". All this was hailed as a confirmation of Oates's depositions. The two villains subsequently brought their fictions to harmonise better together, and deposed to having overheard at Somerset House a plot to kill the king, in which the queen was implicated. Oates actually had the effrontery to appear at the bar of the Commons; he there with a loud voice exclaimed, "I, Titus Oates, accuse Catherine queen of England of high treason" The Lords being dissatisfied with the evidence, refused their concurrence, the charge was therefore dropped. No executions had as yet taken

place; they now came on with fearful rapidity. The first victim was Stayley, the catholic banker, who was executed for treasonable words uttered in a tavern, and sworn to by Carstairs, called by Burnet a man of infamous character. Coleman, the victim of the perjuries of Oates and Bedloe, came next, and many followed him before the year was out.

6. Impeachment of Danby and dissolution of the second Long Parliament, 1679. Danby, the lord treasurer had, by order of Charles and in opposition to his own judgment, written to Montague the ambassador at Paris, to make an offer of the kings's services, in disposing the allies to accept the conditions of peace; and if they did not, of neutrality on the part of England, for which services Louis should pay Charles a given sum. The French monarch, displeased at the marriage of the Prince of Orange, and no longer in need of the court of England, determined to punish Charles; he therefore refused to pay any longer the pension stipulated by treaty, alleging that the conditions had not been performed. Louis then urged Montague to betray the secret in order to ruin Danby; the ambassador therefore returned to England, and obtaining a seat in the House, laid before it the celebrated despatch. The Commons, under the impulse of the moment, voted that the lord-treasurer be impeached of high treason. The impeachment charged the Earl withaccroaching on the royal power by acting without communication with the other officers of state: endeavouring to subvert the government by keeping on foot a standing army: negotiating a peace in favor of France to the prejudice of England, in order to obtain money for the support of that army: concealing the papist plot wasting the royal treasure: and obtaining grants for himself, contrary to the act of parliament. Danby denied all, and challenged proof; the Commons failed in obtaining his committal to the Tower. To secure his safety, he proposed to the council to terminate the session of parliament, Charles readily agreed, and the proceedings against his treasurer were thus suspended. In less than a month the "pension" parliament was dissolved (Jan. 24), after an existence of nearly eighteen years.

7. Charles's second parliament carries on the impeachment of Danby, 1679. Danby's hopes depended altogether upon the construction of the new parliament, but he was doomed to disappointment. The country being intensely excited, his adherents were rejected and their places supplied with those who believed in a real catholic plot, and hated an administration which, as they supposed, was not unfriendly to the catholic interest. Danby sought to propitiate his opponents by obtaining from Charles an order, that the Duke of York should quit the king

dom before the meeting of parliament and reside at Brussels. The Duke consented on condition that his rights should not be sacrificed to the pretensions of Monmouth, who had undertaken to prove a contract of marriage between Charles and his mother. The king to settle this point, made a declaration before the council, that he had never married other woman than Catherine his wife then living; this declaration which he subscribed was enrolled in Chancery. When the parliament met (March 6), Charles, having obtained Danby's resignation, informed the two Houses, that whatever Danby had done with respect to writing letters, or enquiring into the plot, was by his express orders; and that for the offences for which he was impeached, a full pardon had been granted him and would be repeated a dozen times if necessary. The Commons, after an angry discussion, resolved that pardons in bar of impeachment by the Commons of England were irregular and illegal. Danby was committed to the Tower, where he remained till 1685. It was when Danby fell from power, that Charles sent for Temple from the Hague, and by his advice formed a New Council consisting of thirty members, fifteen of which were to be selected from the popular leaders of the two Houses. Of this council the Earl of Shaftesbury was the president. Great joy was manifested throughout the country, for it was thought the king would now be one with the people; but the Commons suspecting it to be an artifice, suspended their judgment.

8. The Exclusion Bill, 1679. Shaftesbury, although now the president of the council, showed himself as hostile to the court as ever. Without difficulty, he moved the House to active measures against the papists, and for the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne. Charles, who saw their drift, offered to enact, that in the event of a Catholic coming to the throne, all presentations belonging to the crown should be vested in Protestant trustees; that the parliament in existence at the king's demise should continue to sit; that the council, the judges, the lord-lieutenants, and the officers of the navy, should be appointed or displaced only by authority of parliament. The Commons rejected this offer, and prepared a Bill of Exclusion, which provided that whereas James, Duke of York, being a papist, and in alliance with the pope to advance the power of France, the said James should be incapable of inheriting the crown of England and Ireland; that when the crown became vacant it should devolve on that person next in succession who had always professed the Protestant religion; that if the Duke of York should ever return to these dominions, he should be, and was thereby attainted of high treason; and so also of every one, during the king's life, or afterwards, who should correspond with, counsel, or aid the said

Duke. The bill passed the Commons by a large majority. But it now became a general opinion that Shaftesbury and his party were aiming to place the Duke of Monmouth on the throne; this, with the fact that the parliament was about to pass a strong reso. lution relative to the moneys paid by the late treasurer to several members of the pension parliament, determined the king suddenly to put an end to the session, May 27: in consequence of Shaftes bury's intrigues, it was in a few months dissolved. The Exclusion Bill was renewed in the next parliament, but rejected by the peers chiefly through the influence of Halifax; another attempt made at the Oxford parliament failed.

This parliament is chiefly remarkable for passing the celebrated Habeas Corpus Act, "for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and for prevention of imprisonments beyond the seas"; it was indeed the only important measure perfected in Charles's second parliament, and obtained mainly through the management of Shaftesbury.

9. The Meal Tub Plot, 1679. Dangerfield, a man who for different crimes had suffered the punishments of whipping, burning in the hand, and pillory, being then in Newgate for debt, sought aid of a Mrs. Cellier, a Catholic, promising in return to obtain for her some papers from a fellow prisoner, a supposed agent of Shaftesbury. On obtaining his discharge, he was employed to collect money for Mrs. Cellier, and pretended to the discovery of a most dangerous conspiracy. Through his patrons he was introduced to various persons, and by one of them to the Duke of York, to whom he declared that the Presbyterians had proposed during the king's illness the month before (Sept.) to raise an army and seize on the government. A paper was handed to the Duke to show that commissions had been distributed, and a plan actually arranged for a revolution. Dangerfield was rewarded both by James and his brother the king, but shortly after was committed to Newgate, for an attempt to deceive the government by a bundle of forged papers. While in prison, he declared that he had been instigated by Lady Powis and Mrs. Cellier to engage in a sham plot to cover a real one; that it was not Presbyterians, but the papists who were plotting; and that Arundel had offered him £2000 to kill the king; and to kill Shaftesbury, Powis had offered £500. He further declared that the document on which the sham plot was founded, was concealed in Mrs. Cellier's house, in a meal-tub; the paper being really found there, the whole affair obtained the name of the Meal-tub Plot. Lady Powis, Mrs. Cellier, and Lord Castlemaine were appeared against by Dangerfield, but all acquitted. This plot remains a mystery to the present day, one party holding that the Catholics